


Bending the Rules (Putting it Together)

by ellabell



Category: Being Erica, Flashpoint
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellabell/pseuds/ellabell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after she becomes a Doctor, a woman that the rules don't seem to apply to walked through Erica's door.  But she didn't really want to follow the rules in the case either.  Jules Callaghan was not her normal patient, but somehow, they make it work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bending the Rules (Putting it Together)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ainsley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainsley/gifts).



> There were two prompts that I loved here: Erica, post-canon as a Doctor, and what makes Jules so awesome?
> 
> I figured I could tackle both of those questions in one story. I hope you like it!

Erica felt that gentle nudge in her brain telling her that a patient needed her, and she swore under her breath. She had a pile of manuscripts to go through that were now piled almost as high as her desk, and the book that she was actually publishing needed the latest round of edits. Still, duty called. She excused herself to get more coffee from the adjacent room, and instead slipped into her office.

It was weird, though. Normally she instinctively knew which patient she was going to see. Normally she had more warning, had flashes of what was going on in their lives, and even which regret would be the most relevant to the situation. In this case, she had nothing.

She sat at her desk and re-arranged the papers she found there. Sometimes her subconscious pulled the relevant information and put it out there for her to see and reflect on, but nothing was there yet, so she sat patiently and waited.

The woman that came through the door looked about the same age as she did, but couldn't have been more different from anyone else that she's encountered in the job. She was pretty and petite – probably only reaching a touch over 5 feet, but definitely compact. Erica could see that there was muscle and strength under her clothes which were...

Well, she looked like something out of an action movie. Erica took in the woven cargo pants that were tucked into her combat boots, the thigh holsters, and the bulletproof vest with many pockets and attachments. A large rifle with a scope was slung over her shoulder, and Erica could see several more rounds sticking out of one of the pockets. Her brown hair was tied back and she had a dark baseball cap pulled down so Erica could almost not see her eyes.

Yet, despite the obvious power that Erica could not only see but feel as well, she stood hesitantly just inside the door, her right fingers twitching as if the unfamiliarity was enough to want to reach for her sidearm.

Erica knew it was time to talk. "Hi, I'm Dr. Erica. Can I help you with something?"

It was only then, after taking in the exterior of the stranger, that she noticed the tears in her eyes. "Um," she said, with a break in her voice. "I'm looking for Dr. Tom?"

Erica stayed seated, but leaned forward. "Dr. Tom retired last year. I've taken over most of his remaining patients." The stranger grimaced, but Erica gestured to the seat in front of her. "Would you like to sit down?"

The woman reluctantly took the rifle off her shoulder and set it down on the bookshelf near the wall; it was normally full of knickknacks and other things but today it was mysteriously clear. The woman carefully took the gun out of her holster as well, and methodically took off the bullet proof vest before sitting down. 

Erica just waited in silence, figuring it would be best to see where this went on its own.

"I'm Jules. Uh, Julianna Callaghan. But I go by Jules." She had an easy smile and despite the tears in her eyes, she looked happy. 

"Hi Jules, I'm Dr. Erica." She waited until the woman acknowledged her, and then moved on. "I thought I knew all of Dr. Tom's patients, but you're new for me. Care to tell me a bit about yourself?"

"Did Dr. Tom leave you any files or anything? Mine's kind of a bit of a unique case. I can wait. I know it's important to be well informed about your subject."

The phrasing was odd and Erica took note of it as she went over to the filing cabinets that she kept on the other side of the room. "Dr. Tom did leave me some files, but I don't look at them unless I have permission from the patient." She waited again for the nod and the file was sitting there, even though Erica was sure it has never been there before. She grabbed it and went back to the desk, spreading it out in front of her, taking quick peeks into Jules's history and job. "It says here that you work for the SRU. I've seen them on the news a few times. Can you tell me a bit about your job?"

"I work for the Strategic Response Unit. We resolve extreme situations that the regular police force are not equipped to handle by using negotiation to avoid the use of deadly force whenever possible. Our motto is to Connect, Respect, and Protect."

"That sounds interesting, Jules, but it sounds like something out of a manual or off a website. What do _you_ do?"

"I work in a team of six people responding to hot calls – people with firearms or hostages, bomb scares, or suspicious packages, and we serve high-risk arrest warrants."

"That's great Jules," Erica repeated. "But what do _you_ do?" 

She pursed her lips. "I'm a negotiator. And a trained sniper, but I'm usually helping the boss in gathering information about the subject. I interview people close to the subject like family members and colleagues, and help prepare a response plan to each individual situation."

The response was still clinical, but at least they were getting somewhere. The comment about knowing her subject made more sense, now. Erica flipped some pages in the file, but realized that it would take a really long time to read through Dr. Tom's notes, and she would rather just talk to find out what made this girl tick.

"Tell me about your therapy with Dr. Tom."

There was no hesitation in the woman's comments. She was quick with her words – she barely had to think before she had a well developed argument. Erica could see that she was smart and could think on her feet. When Jules was in a better mood, Erica guessed that she would be quite the smart-ass too.

Jules's eyes sparkled, this time not with tears but with the humour that Erica was looking for. "We time travel."

Erica laughed, and Jules chuckled and it was welcome sound. "Let's move to the chairs, it's less formal, and I have a feeling I'm going to like you, Julianna Callaghan." Erica waved her hand toward the sofa and plush chairs that she had put in at the beginning of the year.

"Establish a relationship with the subject. Well done."

"I –" Erica stumbled but saw the small smirk on Jules's face again. "You're going to be trouble, aren't you?"

"Dr. Tom seemed to think so," she responded, but they both moved anyway. Erica again was silent, waiting for her to start, and she did. "Wait for the subject to explain themselves, tell you what you need to know. Let them fill in the silences." Erica just raised her eyebrow, and Jules finally gave in. "I started therapy in the late 90s. I was hired by the RCMP right out of high school – not many people get to do that, but I guess they saw something in me that I liked."

"That's impressive."

"Yeah," Jules nodded. "I guess it is," she said, and she smiled, getting more into her story. "The RCMP still wanted me to go to school, though, and they had a program at that time of putting undercover officers onto college and university campuses to assess some of the student groups and I was a perfect fit. I was even part of a group from the U of T that was going to the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle that year."

"I read about those. What happened?"

Juliet looked a little sad, then. "About a month before I was supposed to go I started getting really cold feet. I was around people that were really passionate about what they believed in, and I almost started believing what they were saying. I started keeping info from my work. I lost track of the mission and almost ruined my life because of it."

Erica waited patiently.

"And then I was in a car accident. I had just broken up with my boyfriend for disagreeing with me, and was on my car phone – remember those? Well, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and I ran a red light. No one was hurt but me. But when I woke up in that hospital bed, there was Doctor Tom, spouting off corny quotes and asking me if I wanted to change my life." She trailed off and looked as if she was caught in the memory.

"Sounds familiar."

"Yeah." Jules looked around the room, the smile from reminiscing gone. "Look, I'm sorry, it was just a hard day at work. I uh... it helps to remember that when you're just out of high school, you don't have all the answers."

"I may not have the history that you and Dr. Tom did, but I can still help."

"No," Jules said sadly, and she went to put her vest and guns back on. "No you can't."

 

***

It was one month later that she saw Jules again. She had let her leave the last time with no fight, but Erica used some of her time to pore over the case files. Erica had been right – Jules had been a trouble patient, but Dr. Tom relished in it. She was argumentative, but her arguments were always thought through and relevant. Jules never thought she that she couldn't do something, instead she was concerned with the ethics of changing a particular memory or moment in her past. Several times she didn't change a single thing, just because she felt that it has been a learning experience for her that it wasn't fair that she got the second chance when many didn't.

Her skills as a negotiator were well practiced in group therapy too – she logged more hours in the room than the rest of her group combined. She had somehow sussed out that the end of the group phase was coming, and asked to be transferred to another group. Her instincts were phenomenal, and her wit and guile were above anything that Erica had seen in a patient. And in 2005, she completely quit therapy.

Jules had just entered the room. She was wearing much the same that she had been from the week before, but this time she didn't have the rifle. Erica didn't even give her the chance to speak before she asked, "Why did you turn down Doctor training? You passed the test with flying colours."

Jules stayed at attention, just inside the door. "I had just been transferred to Team One. I was going to do it, but I had point on a call that we had – a boy that was holding up a drug store, needing a fix. When I finally talked him down he said that he wished he could change the past, and it touched to close to home. I have the opportunity to help people _now_ , the ones that don't have a chance at Therapy."

Erica hesitated, really thinking about what Jules said. Her first instinct was to argue, was to say that she could save lives here too – but then she really listened to what she said. She had thought a lot about it, and her reasoning made sense. She nodded. "Okay," Erica said, even surprising herself. She had no experience with moments like the ones that Jules must go through every day. She couldn't be one to judge. "So, what can I do for you today?"

Jules sank into the chair across from Erica's desk. "I felt the need to apologize for last week but I think there are other things on my mind."

"Like the comment about how you didn't have all the answers as a teenager. Did that have something to do with that singer that was shot? I saw it on the news."

Jules nodded. "My teammate, the one who shot her – he's having rough time with it. I know he is, but he's not talking about it."

Erica could see flashes behind her eyes of what happened that day, and wished she could shake it off. The terrors that Jules must deal with...

"I know that look," Jules said, breaking into her thoughts. "Doctor Tom had it whenever I talked about my job."

Erica sat back in her chair. In her Doctor training, Dr. Tom would make her talk about a similar situation to get her to connect to the person she was trying to help. "Can you tell me about a kill that you made that was particularly hard?"

"Better yet. I can show you."

Erica was shocked when she was pulled to a roof top, she and Jules standing behind a younger version of the woman as she looked through a scope and said, "I have the solution."

"Okay..." Erica started. "What's going on here."

"What's the first rule of therapy?"

"You can't bring anyone back from the dead." Erica looked around, taking in her surroundings.

"Because of my job, they had to develop a new method for me. Any time I was going to the past since I started with the SRU, I couldn't change anything. Any tiny change could bring someone back to life, or kill someone else. We couldn't take that chance."

"So observation only."

"Yeah." Jules took a scope off her tool belt and handed it to Erica. "What do you see?"

It took Erica a minute to figure out where the commotion was, but finally she figured it out. "An office building. There's a man with a gun and other people around him, but he's not aiming it."

"He had just been fired because of inappropriate passes at the receptionist, and he wanted to corrupt all the files he had been working on. What else do you see?"

Erica looked through all the different windows until she saw what Jules must have been talking about. "There's a child there, hiding under a desk. I don't think he sees her, but she can see everything."

The man continued to wave his gun and the SRU officer in the room looked like he was trying to talk him down, but the man was just getting more agitated, finally pointing the gun at a hostage, and then the younger version of Jules took the shot, killing him instantly.

"The girl was 8 years old and saw everything." It was silent for a moment as they both watched the aftermath, and then she started again. "My family has some property outside of the city, to the north. I have four older brothers, did you know that?" She didn't wait for an answer. "My dad used to take them out hunting, when I was still too little. One day when I was about eight I followed them. I didn't even think that it would be dangerous. We were barely into the woods and they saw their first deer, out in the distance, and my dad got it on his first shot. That's not something that an eight year old should see. And that was a _deer_. I turned and ran right back to the house. They didn't even know I was there until I made some noise right at the edge of the woods."

Erica stayed silent, letting Jules stay absorbed in her story. "It wasn't even that I saw the deer die. It was that I was unprepared to see it. The sound of the gun, the spray of the blood... My brothers had teased me about hunting before, saying that I wouldn't be able to handle it, and I always laughed it off, but the truth was, I didn't actually know what hunting was. It took me four years before I wanted to go back to the house, and when I did, I went hunting with my dad. He taught me how to use the gun, how to aim, and how to kill. Within the year I was a better shot than any of my brothers. But I didn't love hunting like they did. I just figured out how to manage the expectations of what we were doing. That little girl? It's going to take a lot longer than three years to get over that."

Erica handed back the scope and followed the younger Jules off the roof. "So, how does this relate back to your co-worker?"

They reached the main floor and watched as Jules surrendered her weapon to a guy in the large black van that was outside the scene, and she sat and waited quietly, completely sequestered from anyone else. "You try not to have expectations in this job. You just try to do a good job, and bring home everyone safe. But sometimes, you know who the bad guy is. Nothing is ever black and white, but you can identify who the threat is, who is causing the problems. And you concentrate on them. The father was violent. He had restraining order against him. He was the bad guy." She shrugged. "No one expected the daughter to be the one with the gun, the one that needed to be talked down. Sometimes it _is_ about expectations."

They watched and listened as someone arrived to take Jules's statement, and they saw the look on her face when it was revealed that there was a child in the room.

"So, what did you do?" Erica asked as the scene faded around them, and they arrived back in her office. 

"Me? I was cleared, but took some vacation days anyway." She shrugged and walked toward the door, pausing before she left. "I went hunting."

***

The third time she saw Jules, she was wearing normal clothing. She went straight to the couch and flopped into it. "I love my job."

"Then why are you here?"

Erica was happy to see the mischievous glare back in her eyes. "Because I don't have an office of my own, and I really need a time out."

"Problems at work? "

"No. I love my job. It's my family that I'm having a problem with. My nephews are awesome, but negotiating with a five year is something I do _not_ have training for."

Erica laughed. "You know that therapy isn't about hiding from a hard situation, right?"

Jules chuckled back at her. "My youngest nephew is teething. This isn't just a hard situation, this is like the apocalypse and I just needed a moment of silence." Her smile faded quickly, though, and Erica could see that there was something else behind her eyes. "Erica, are you officially my doctor?"

"I... I don't actually know. I don't have the same relationship with you that I do with the other patients, nor do I get information on what you're going through." She shrugged. "Do you want me to be?"

Jules covered her eyes with her elbow and took a deep breath. "I have lots of friends, but not many girlfriends. I think I just need a friend right now."

Erica stood up, making a decision. She like Jules from the moment she first met her and the thought of them being friends had crossed her mind more than once. "Then let's take this somewhere more personal." Jules followed her out the door and into her loft. "Adam? I'm home and I brought a friend."

He appeared around the corner shrugging on a jacket. "Hey," he said as he gave her a quick kiss and they exchanged introductions. "I'm just on my way to meet the guys for a few; I'll be back before you go to bed. Sorry to rush, it's nice to meet you." Another quick kiss and he was gone.

"He's cute."

Erica couldn't stop smiling. "I know, so stay away," she said with a laugh.

Jules smiled back. "I'm taken, and Adam's not my type. I prefer blondes." 

Jules followed her into the kitchen and Erica looked the wine rack. "You a fan of white or red? Or we have beer if that's more your speed..." she trailed off when she saw the shade of white Jules's face had turned. "Or you could be in desperate need of a girlfriend."

"Yeah. You know, I should go, I gotta get back before my family notices I'm gone. Can you send me back to the family house that I told you about before?"

"Of course," she said, but hesitated just before the door. "Look, I'd like to be friends. I really like you. But you can come see me in my office any time you like." 

Jules stared at her, but then gave her a quick hug and darting through the door.

***

The fourth time she saw Jules, she was waiting for her in her office. Erica didn't even know that it was where she was going when she opened the door, but she wasn't at all surprised when she saw Jules back on the couch, sleeping in her work clothing with a garbage can on the floor near her head. 

Erica watched her breathe for a minute, and then backed right back out. Clearly, Jules needed the time out, and she was happy to let her have it.

***

"So, I'm pregnant," Jules announced to her on the fifth time they were together, showing up at her loft this time instead of her office.

"Yeah, I guessed. How are you feeling about it?"

"Scared. Happy. Excited. Nervous. Worried about how it will affect my job. Wondering how Sam and I can possibly raise a child while we're both working on the same team with the hours we keep."

"Sorry pretty much the whole gambit."

"But happy being the biggest one."

"Good. Oh, congratulations!" Erica squealed as she gave Jules a hug, and Jules hugged her back.

"Thanks. Actually, I was hoping that we could talk, with me as a patient, this time."

Erica nodded towards the door and they ended up back in her office. "What can I do for you?"

"I grew up with four brothers, I told you that. I think they were one of the reasons that I turned out the way I did. They're giants compared to me, and I learned how to keep up with them. My entire life I could roughhouse with them and still usually beat them, and I knew how to push their buttons. I could talk back to them like nothing else, and we could always laugh at everything."

Maybe it was because Jules gave her permission to be her therapist for a few minutes, but she could see images of what Jules was describing. She had a happy childhood. Her fast thinking got her out of trouble with her parents while her brothers got in trouble, but they were still friends. Erica was not surprised to find that she was jealous that Jules got to keep all of hers. "So, what's going on?"

"Actually, I don't know why I asked to speak to you as a patient. I just... I want more kids, after this one. I want it to have a sibling."

"That was an easy revelation. Now we can just go back to friends."

Jules gave her another hug and then turned to go, but she turned back and flashed her 'cocky' smile. "Well, then as my friend, you'll probably want to come to my wedding next week. I'll text you the details." She waited a half second, probably to see Erica's face, but then she left with flourish. That girl was certainly never boring.

***

They saw each other almost daily over the next few years. It helped that they could meet in the space between, and that for whatever reason, Jules was allowed to bend the rules.

***

Adam and Sam became friends, as did all of their kids. They babysat whenever each other's jobs required it with an understanding that almost no one else could comprehend. But both the SRU and being a Doctor required a certain type of life.

***

When Sadie was seven Jules said that she was thinking about taking hers and Erica's kids up to the house north of city for a weekend of sleepovers. Her brother's kids suggested it, and they just wanted to find a weekend.

Erica felt a shudder go through her that she had tried to avoid for so long before pointing at a date in the calendar. "Think you can get them to stay past the weekend?"

Jules looked confused, but agreed. "Do you want to stay up there too? We could all go up, spend some time –"

"No!" Erica interrupted, and suddenly the reason why Jules was allowed to bend the rules, maybe even the reason that she walked into Erica's office in the first place became clear. 

She shook her head, amazed that she had never put it together before. Jules had always been an amazing friend, but the way that she was allowed to use Erica's office through the years always confused. Even Dr. Nadia had wondered about it when she asked her. But she always thought that there must be a bigger purpose on why she and Jules had been thrown together, why Jules came to her after not having therapy for so many years.

She took a deep breath, and said what she hoped she would never have to say. "You and Sam need to stay here. You're going to be needed that day. And... would you stay away from the subway?"


End file.
